Great Wolf Lodge.... the original.
Sweet.... an indoor, bear themed waterpark in the Dells?
Having spent the day before at Six Flags Great America and having driven to Madison, WI (and its zoo) and onward to the Dells.... By way of Little Amerricka, Timber Falls and Knucklehead's (that just happens to be next door!)
we made it to out hotel for the night....yay!
The lodge... its big
Woo, almost there!
The lobby, very luxurious... but who cars because...
There's an arcade inside! but who cars because..........
There's a pretty big waterpark inside!!!!
After dumping our crap in the room MedusaRob and I changed into our swim shorts and ran downstairs to the slides! yaayyyyyy
yyaaaaayyyyyyyy!!!
Once inside, Crooked Creek, the parks lazy river is the first thing you see
In the back of what's the original building is a kiddie area Hawk's Beak and the Mineshaft Slides that ended up being pretty good!
The original room also has some activity pools and a few hot tubs for both family's and adults only.
To the left is what was the second addition to the waterpark.....
Fort Mackenzie and the Totem Tower slides
With the big dumping bucket 'n all. woo
There's also one major slide in this section.. but we'll get to that later. There's also remains of a since-removed slide (patches where it entered and exited the building and where its exit pool once was)
Back in the original building we now head to the right... where most of the new slides are at GWL
Slap Tail Pond... a sizable wavepool is the main attraction here
And its lined with cabanas!!
To the right of the pool are Coyote Cannon and Whirly Bird Run tube slides
Coyote Cannon is the yellow slide and Whirly Bird Run the green. When it first opened I think Coyote used multi-rider tubes as its slide size was larger than Whirly Birds but I don't know GWL's history, just guessing here.
Here's where Coyote Cannon leaves and reenters the building, exciting. I know.
And up against the back wall... almost in time-out was Montanan Edge Raceway
A pretty sweet four lane headfirst mat-racer, here's the outside view of its helix.
It was one of the best slides at the resort.
An one last photo of this area showing the slides outside of their building.
Ok, now moving back to the original building... in back of it is a small-ish outdoor waterpark area with a few more slides and pools....
Thunder Bay, featuring Thunder Run and Lightning Falls waterslides
and an activity pool.
Both outdoor slides are tube slides.
And now were back to where I said we'll get back to later.....
.....Great Wolf Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells is home to ProSlide's first enclosed Tornado slide!
Howlin' Tornado!!
This alone made staying at GWL worth it. Tornado slides are pretty notorious for long slow lines, but here you need to be a resort guest to slide.
Making this Tornado a walk-on!
Rob and I must have ridden it a good ten (15?) times... As soon as we got off the slide we'd run right back up the 6 flights of stairs just to go down again...
and again... and again.
Most Tornado slides end after the funnel. Howlin' Tornado has a little bonus slide at the end to get you back inside the building.
And at night the ride is covered in color changing lights.
(The waterpark closed just after sundown the night we stayed so we only got to enjoy the lights while sliding for a little bit... but I would have loved to have gone for a true night ride on it...)
Pretty
So yeah, Great Wolf Lodge was pretty awesome and a nice way to relax... if you call running up stairs and diving head-first down slides relaxing... Having just driven like.. halfway across Wisconsin
and before doing it all over again the next day!
And.... <3 what was basically 'Exclusive Slide Time' on a beasty ProSlide Torando! :D
Also....
This....
Creepy
